Before Mageia 3: Mageia 2 in Perspective Redux

The early articles of this site revolved around the late and somewhat lamented Mandriva, which faced troubles as a Linux distribution, product, and company. Although Distrowatch lists Mageia within its top 10 of most clicked distributions, Mageia receives the same coverage in the media as long running PCLinuxOS and Sabayon. In fact, popular frugal Linux distribution Puppy Linux is mentioned more in articles and forums than Mageia.

Why run Mageia 2 when the developers will be releasing Mageia 3 ( an RC is already out) soon? Well, to see if an updated previous release is a stable one - typically a good sign that a distribution has matured and the next release deserves a go. The positive reception for openSUSE 12.3, for example, was already foreshadowed by the excellent openSUSE 12.2 (which I'm still running to this day).

Some Observations

1. Inspecting /etc/rpm/macros. After setting up Mageia 2 and installing a surprisingly humble amount of package updates in comparison with a typical Lubuntu or openSUSE install, users might receive an /etc/rpm/macros window. It's an unusual prompt considering that openSUSE and Fedora, both RPM-based distributions, never educate the user with new RPMs setup. It was a harmless window, but I can definitely imagine a new Linux convert or a jaded Linux veteran exclaiming "The hell is that!"